Downtown tractor rally tries to cultivate support for property rights

By AMY ROLPH, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, October 12, 2006

Photo: Dan DeLong/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Whatcom County beef farmer Wes Kentch drives his tractor in a convoy with other I-933 supporters Thursday on Second Avenue in downtown Seattle. I-933 is a controversial land-use initiative being backed by many farm groups. less

Whatcom County beef farmer Wes Kentch drives his tractor in a convoy with other I-933 supporters Thursday on Second Avenue in downtown Seattle. I-933 is a controversial land-use initiative being backed by many ... more

Photo: Dan DeLong/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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A supporter of I-933, in a convoy of farm vehicles, passes opponents of the initiative on Fourth Avenue at Pine Street Thursday during a rolling demonstration. I-933 would require the government to compensate landowners when property restrictions damage the value of their land, or to modify the restrictions. less

A supporter of I-933, in a convoy of farm vehicles, passes opponents of the initiative on Fourth Avenue at Pine Street Thursday during a rolling demonstration. I-933 would require the government to compensate ... more

Photo: Meryl Schenker/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Downtown tractor rally tries to cultivate support for property rights

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It was a clash of two worlds that rarely meet -- tractors, flatbed trucks and other farm machinery rolled slowly down the streets of downtown Seattle on Thursday afternoon, stopping traffic and causing pedestrians to turn their heads and stare.

Their invasion said one thing to the city slickers of Seattle: There's a whole lot more to Washington state than the urban Puget Sound area.

The farmers driving the vehicles were the foot soldiers in the battle over Initiative 933, a controversial property rights proposal on November's general election ballot.

Backed by the Washington State Farm Bureau, I-933 would require the government to compensate landowners when property restrictions damage the value of their land, or to modify the restrictions.

"We think this is a common-sense proposal," said farm bureau President Steve Appel, who watched the demonstration from the sidewalk. "It's not that extreme."

Farmland seems to be the chosen battleground for the initiative, though some contend that developers stand to benefit just as much from the proposal.

Television ads produced by the No on 933 coalition have focused on farmers who don't support the measure, but Appel shrugs the ads off with an appeal to logic: "Would the farm bureau sponsor something that's bad for farmers?"

The concern supporters of the initiative have with the way land-use regulations work now is that they sometimes prohibit use of certain parts of their land, which can lower the value of the property.

In addition to creating "pay or waive" method for claims filed about regulations, the initiative would bar the creation of new regulations that would prohibit uses of property that are legal now.

"Do you want the government to control everything or do you want to control something yourself?" asked David Card, a Kitsap County resident who came with his wife to Seattle to lend their support to the initiative. "You're never going to get to control it all."

But Thursday's demonstration didn't just serve as a soapbox for those in favor of I 933 -- there were signs on both sides of the issue outside Westlake Center as the tractors rolled by.

But Jack Field, the executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen's Association, said the initiative wouldn't mean implications like that, because lawmakers and landowners would work together preemptively to keep land-restrictions reasonable.